Michelle Estrada, MA, MFTI
(Through the Looking Glass, 1996) [33 pages]

This report is based on an exploratory statewide study of California adoption agencies regarding assessment measures used to evaluate prospective adoptive parents. "One of the most imortant ways a decision maker's negative perceptions can affect a disabled person's life is in the realm of parenthood. As society has witnessed recently in well-publicized court battles, the issue of parents' fitness -- played out in either the custody or adoption context -- often is highly charged even when the issue of disabilities is absent...Unfortunately, the high degree of controversy inherent to the general issue of parental 'fitness' appears to have overshadowed or relegated to obscurity the particular concerns of disabled persons seeking to adopt children."